Thelot agrees that the impetus behind the 2016 nostalgia is less of an organic revival and more of a commercial one. “When we think about a specific epoch — say, the Renaissance — [the label] describes a unified yet complex moment in time,” he says. But similar to indie sleaze, “people are trying to hodge-podge it and give it a name.” The commodification of 2016 “only serves as selling that time period in retrospect,” he adds, “but not the validity of what actually took place back then.”
And, honestly, who can blame them? 2016 contained the last drops of collective culture before the long-term effects of social media and influencer culture kicked in — before the 2020s rode in, characterized by the distinct lack of culture. So far, the 2020s are drenched in self-awareness and nihilism. Online perception is king, and people are more performative than ever, yet also somehow driven by authenticity, Cao says. Reference and search-optimized phrasing are crucial to digital culture and boosting one’s own visibility online.
“We see this desire to name everything to make it easier for people to reference back to it,” Cao adds. “Tech, in my opinion, is at the heart of what shapes our culture right now.”
In between all the AI slop and rage bait taking over my feed, I won’t lie, it’s been nice to see posts of my friends reminiscing about their past selves in deep-fried, rose-tinted filters, captioned with how they were unaware of what the future would hold — pictures that were originally created and shared at a time when posting yourself online meant something entirely different. At the same time I can’t help but feel the temporality of this band-aid, and wonder if there’s a better use of our time seeking that same optimism in the real world right now, instead.
